Products That Do Double Duty

Those of us dedicated to taking care of our skin tend to always be on alert for little things we can do to improve our skin’s health. This means staying alert to new products that are useful to us as well as staying aware of the simple things we can all do. A good example of this is knowing how to make the most of a situation where we’re missing our favorite products. There are actually plenty of ingredients available in your own home that can work well as a quick substitute if you suddenly find yourself lacking a particular product in your lineup. They are far from complete replacements, but they can at least be a quick stopgap. Many do-it-yourself options tend to focus on these ingredients and their benefits, but not all of those solutions are as good for you skin as their advocates believe. With that in mind, we’re going to touch on single ingredients and their properties instead of any mixtures. This will help us stay focused and avoid potentially harmful combinations.

Olive Oil
As a common cooking ingredient, we tend to reach for olive oil relatively readily for many recipes. It can also make a great complement to salad and pasta when used properly. You can do a bit of skincare with it in a pinch though. As an oil, it is actually highly effective at moisturizing the skin. Olive oil can make for a good substitute moisturizer for a brief period. It works well for most areas of the skin, but can be particularly good for the hands. Soaking your cuticles in olive oil can substitute for cuticle oil quickly and effectively. It is worth noting that olive oil isn’t perfectly flexible. Despite it being usable on the face, it isn’t advisable to use it that often as the oil isn’t formulated to be noncomedogenic and as a result can accidentally clog pores when used too often. We also need to highlight that an oil isn’t a good option for anyone with oily skin. Like most of these products, olive oil is at best a temporary substitute.

Lemons
There are plenty of folk uses for lemons in addition to their obvious culinary applications. Interestingly enough, lemons can be effective as a stopgap form of skincare too when used properly. Remember that citrus fruits like lemons are absolutely full of vitamin C which is particularly skin friendly. The vitamin helps to support the skin’s natural healing process by providing it with the necessarily building blocks for collagen. Lemons have far more going for them though. The citric acid in them provides a light exfoliating and brightening effect when used carefully. We do need to stress that this doesn’t mean you can directly apply a lemon slices to your face. The concentration of it can irritate the skin. It is better to dilute the juice of a lemon a little with water before dabbing the mixture onto the skin. This will help minimize the chance of irritation while still offering a quick, temporary solution to misplacing a cleanser.

Aloe Vera
Most of us are already familiar with some of aloe vera’s skincare properties given its ubiquity as a sunburn treatment. That tends to be all we use it for though. Aloe vera has many more uses and is actually one of the better household options open to you for skincare thanks to it being usable for a more extended period of time since it is typically already formulated to be at a skin friendly concentration. It is actually good as an antibacterial compound to spread on the skin. When combined with the anti-inflammatory properties that make it good for treating sunburn, this actually makes aloe vera a highly effective way to manage acne. It is also useful for calming other kind of chronic irritation as well. On top of all this, it appears to stimulate your skin’s natural healing processes as well. So don’t leave aloe vera on the shelf just because you don’t have a sunburn. Your skin will thank you.

There are plenty of things in our homes that are easily usable to help keep our skin healthy. It is a matter of knowing which things are viable and how long you can actually use them before you need to use a standard product. We’ve covered a few useful options that are good as a way to protect your skin when you suddenly run out of a product but try not to rely on them permanently. Remember that formulated products will always be better because they’ve been purposefully designed with a goal in mind, but these will at least keep your skin healthy for a short while.